Vol. 5, No. 2, 2018, pp. 49–56 ISSN 1903-7031 Editorial Researching Organisational Imbrications and Interstices: A Qualitative Gaze on how Mundane Public Administration Works Bagga Bjerge1 , Tobias Georg Eule2 , Kasper Trolle Elmholdt3  1Aarhus University, Department of Psychology, Center for Alcohol and Drug Research, Bartholins Allé 10, 8000 Aarhus C: Denmark 2University of Bern, Department of Law, Schanzeneckstraße 1, CH–3001 Bern: Switzerland 3Aalborg University, Department of Political Science, Fibigerstræde 3, 9220 Aalborg Ø: Denmark (1bb.crf@psy.au.dk 2tobias.eule@oefre.unibe.ch 3elm@dps.aau.dk) • Introduction The film I, Daniel Blake, directed by Ken Loach, portrays the everyday struggles of an elderly man navigating the English welfare system. Recovering from a heart attack, Blake experi- ences the bleak reality of an indifferent admin- istration that leaves him hungry and homeless, while still making him jump through ever more absurd bureaucratic hoops. Largely seen as a commentary on current political developments in the United Kingdom under the Cameron and May governments, the film also addresses the quixotic reality of accessing welfare support in social systems around the world, as well as the absurd effects of bureaucracy in general. Beyond more overtly political questions about the extent and sufficiency of welfare pro- visions, a key question for welfare providers, recipients and academics alike has been how welfare services are provided and received. Welfare states tend to have grown in a rather piecemeal historical process, including the de- velopment of various state, privatised or re- nationalised agencies, with multiple and some- times overlapping obligations. As a result, it can be increasingly difficult to navigate be- tween these organisations – both for service users and employees themselves. Indeed, pub- lic sector service has often been considered a matter of organising ‘pluralistic contexts’ and contents (Denis et al., 2001: 2007). In a com- plex public administration system, this often means that the service user is assessed by dif- ferent agencies simultaneously, and the assess- ment or treatment of a user in one type of wel- fare service is likely to impact or impede claims in other service domains. As a result, there is a growing scholarly interest in the interfaces within and between different welfare services and cross-boundary activities (Cristofoli et al., 2017). For instance, Forbess and James (2014) show how interstices emerge at the fringes of the public sector and in the tangle of public sec- tor agents, businesses and civil society. Indeed, a lack of coherence or difficulty in connecting different organisational units is a widespread matter of concern where particularly vulner- able citizens are in danger of not receiving the support they need, of ‘falling through the cracks’ (Bartfeld, 2003; Walsh et al., 2015). This includes, but is not limited to, children (Bart- feld, 2003; Delany-Moretlwe et al., 2015; Kemp et al. 2009), elderly people (Burns, 2009; Fur- lotte et al., 2012; Grenier et al., 2016) and people with substance use issues (Delany-Moretlwe 49 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0942-0322 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6973-2715 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0325-5266 mailto:bb.crf@psy.au.dk mailto:tobias.eule@oefre.unibe.ch mailto:elm@dps.aau.dk 50 B. Bjerge, T. Eule, and K. Elmholdt: A Qualitative Gaze on how Mundane Public Administration Works Qualitative Studies 5(2), pp. 49–56 ©2018 et al., 2015; Dohan, Schmidt, and Henderson, 2005; Forbess and James, 2014). These issues are well known, and in more general organ- isation studies literature the role of intersti- tial spaces or the betwixt-and-between spaces of formal organisations are recognised as criti- cal for accomplishing organisational tasks (Kel- logg, 2009; Furnari, 2014; Mumby, 2005), and yet, the way users may fall short in these spaces and the new trajectories that are re-negotiated or stabilised, are often black-boxed. A better understanding of the work that takes place at these interfaces of public admin- istration requires an exploration of how wel- fare services are organised at a local level, from a qualitative stance but without reducing the accomplishment to a closed local activity. In the title of this editorial, we open this work at the interfaces by using the terms imbrica- tions and interstices as analytical concepts to capture the phenomena that are investigated in the articles of this special issue. The concept of imbrication in geology is a way to explain patterns of layering or sedimentation; imbrica- tion means to be layered or ‘to be tiled’ and can be said to reflect a ‘history of successive accu- mulations’ (Taylor, 2007: 6). An analogy, thus, could be the ways in which roof tiles - if placed in the right way- overlap one another, so that rain does not come into the house. Organi- sationally speaking, imbrication suggests how ‘the practice’ of one local professional or ad- ministrator, ‘becomes the object of a different practice’ (Taylor 2011: 1285) - activities are lay- ered. Being layered is well known in organising and welfare services; admittedly, imbrications can both make life difficult and pave the way for fairly smooth user trajectories and profes- sional collaboration. Organising does not only happen in imbricated spaces, however, but also in spaces devoid of formal or layered structur- ing. The concept of interstices refers to gaps or breaks in something, such as sunshine filtered through a fence or a river running through a narrow gorge. In welfare systems or public sec- tor organisation these interstices or breaks may be created through silos or divisional bureau- cratic structures, national borders, the physical environment, dispersed geographical locations, finances or management accounting, different professional knowledges, and so on. Para- phrasing Furnari (2014: 440), we may say that the interstitial spaces of public sector organisa- tion refers to ‘the small-scale settings’ where in- dividuals (e.g. citizens, patients, professionals) from different fields or professions ‘interact oc- casionally and informally around common ac- tivities’ (Ibid.). In other words, the interstitial spaces highlight these gaps, or the fringes of formal organising; these spaces may be said to be situated betwixt-and-between formal regu- lation and have to be guided by the discretion of the professional or the capacities of the user and their ability to fill these gaps. By applying these concepts as analytical lenses, we investigate the local organisation and accomplishment of wel- fare services as a reciprocal movement between imbricated activities and interstitial spaces. In this Special Issue of Qualitative Studies, we bring together various theoretical and em- pirical approaches that tackle aspects of imbri- cation and interstices within and between pub- lic organisations. We wish to shed light on the way professionals and users organise at the interface of public sector organisations in the midst of different kinds of services, tools, poli- cies, professional backgrounds and so on. This resonates with public debates within and about public services, where there is an increasing ap- petite for knowledge of, and possible solutions to, problems of the coordination of services, for interdisciplinary collaboration and for “holis- tic” views and strategies for helping users. We wish, through this Special Issue, to explore dif- ferent thematic perspectives in order to provide a platform for bridging conversations across both countries and traditional scholarly bound- aries. Much research on welfare services and implementation has pointed to the inadequacy of welfare organisations in helping users, and in allowing professionals to navigate the systems. This can be identified in all articles of this issue, but at the same time, the articles also ask what bridges the gaps, and how complex welfare sys- tems come to work. Importantly, many schol- ars note that it remains important to disentan- gle the “black box” of the workings of public bureaucracy (cf. Mosse 2004, Bjerge & Bjerre- gaard 2017, Bjerge & Rowe 2017). We specif- ically advance this agenda by exploring ‘how things work’ in public administration (Watson, 2011) and by looking into the methodological B. Bjerge, T. Eule, and K. Elmholdt: A Qualitative Gaze on how Mundane Public Administration Works Qualitative Studies 5(2), pp. 49–56 ©2018 51 issues in theorising these phenomena from a qualitative and practice-based stance. Accomplishing Public Sector Service: Theorising Interstices and Imbrications from a Qualitative Stance Crucially, many qualitative researchers of wel- fare service organisations have struggled to provide knowledge of issues of overlaps and gaps that go beyond the organisations they have studied. This focus on the many con- texts of producing public sector service and the trenchant inter-organisational accomplish- ment resonates well with the focus in current practice-based organisation studies and how organising takes place in a nexus of practices. As Nicolini (2017: 102) notes, performances: ‘can be understood only if we take into ac- count the nexus in which they come into be- ing. What happens here and now and why (the conditions of possibility of any scene of ac- tion) is inextricably linked to what is happen- ing in another ‘here and now’ or what has hap- pened in another ‘here and now’ in the past’. In other words, the accomplishment of public sector services relies on ‘bundles of practices’ taking place elsewhere, and on the material- discursive framing of the situation (Nicolini, 2012). Practice-based approaches are much more prevalent in organisation studies (see e.g. Gherardi, 2009) compared to the literature on public administration (see e.g. Wagenaar, 2012), yet the focus on ‘doing’ and how work is ac- complished in practice by the means of discur- sive and material elements is also an emerging agenda in public administration (ibid.). What the practice-based agenda encourages us to do is to explore the way that public administration actually comes to work, and to consider ques- tions of space and the local ‘tactics’ of civil ser- vants (de Certeau, 1984: Schatzki, 2018).1 As such, practice-based studies of public adminis- tration resemble and advance the ambition of administrative ethnography to explore ‘what happens in practice when civil servants per- form their daily work’ (Boll and Rhodes, 2015) and to expand the context of public services. That is, practice-based studies take a productive view on the mundane practices of public ad- ministration (Bjerge & Bjerregaard, 2017), and thereby add knowledge to more “classic” views on public administration (Putnam et al., 2016), where models of and for organisational set-ups, as well as the actions of those inhabiting these organisations, tend to be well-defined, ordered and predictable. Accordingly, sufficient atten- tion is not given to the fact that the workings of public administration, including its various internal and external boundaries, are continu- ally constructed and reconstructed in variable relationships within everyday practice. The articles collected in this issue all ap- proach public sector services with a practice- based sensitivity where topics such as advice giving, organising across professional bound- aries, the tactics of the employees, casework, and local health policy are all opened up and expanded in new qualitative ways. As case studies, the articles do not give definite an- swers, but rather provide different pathways into the intersections or imbrications and inter- stitial spaces of the welfare services. With the authors´ shared interests in qualitative methods and an interpretative approach, the issue em- phasises the contribution of the qualitative so- cial science studies to addressing core societal debates about the welfare services, the work lives of its employees and the experiences of its users. The articles explore how far such an ap- proach can take us in terms of understanding the everyday, mundane workings of contem- porary welfare services, as well as how such studies tap into, elaborate or even challenge scholarly discussions of how to understand the phenomenon on a broader scale. By taking their points of departure in various empirical settings, the articles explore the complexity of the services. Despite their dissimilar empirical starting points, they also address common fea- tures, which may be ascribed to the nature of welfare services per se. Contributions in This Special Issue A Case Study of Casework Tinkering The first article in the Special Issue addresses the challenges of welfare provision in the Dan- ish administration context, using the example of a single person. Like Daniel Blake, the drug user ‘Marianne’ struggles to navigate the wel- fare state, as her issues relate to multiple health 52 B. Bjerge, T. Eule, and K. Elmholdt: A Qualitative Gaze on how Mundane Public Administration Works Qualitative Studies 5(2), pp. 49–56 ©2018 and welfare service providers. Contrary to the film, however, Maj Nygaard-Christensen, Bagga Bjerge and Jeppe Oute present a com- pelling picture of the inner workings of pub- lic administration by analysing how staff from multiple agencies struggle to work together to advance Marianne’s case. Their article is based on extensive qualitative fieldwork on the in- terrelationship of drug treatment, psychiatric and employment services in Denmark and fo- cuses on a temporary housing and drop-in facil- ity called Oasis. The authors draw on human- technology relations literature and introduce the concept of ‘tinkering’ to the public admin- istration debate. In this way they highlight the process of piecing together a suitable and sus- tainable treatment, and of the handling of Mar- ianne’s case. This process is defined by con- tinuous toing and froing between the different professionals who “quibble” over both practical measures and the interpretations of the issues at hand. The authors suggest that even though it is experienced as a strenuous procedure, ‘tin- kering’ might be the key to successful welfare application, particularly in complex cases. This in turn calls for closer attention to the intrica- cies of the welfare state, and the way groups and individuals make policies work. Health Care Professionalism With- out Doctors: Spatial Surroundings and Counter-Identification in Local Health Houses Drawing on a study of health care professionals in local “health houses” [da: Sundhedshuse] in two Danish municipalities, Østergaard Møller analyses how health houses comprise an alter- native to the medical view of health. The arti- cle advances the ‘vignette method’ as a probing device for qualitative research, and scrutinises the processes through which the profession- als constantly try to differentiate their services from what is offered in hospitals. The author includes an analysis of how institutional, and particularly spatial settings, are key for under- standing such processes. Originally, the health houses were established to pave the way for a “smoother” relationship between citizens and health professionals, and in terms of deliver- ing health promotion and rehabilitation outside hospital - that is, to make health services more accessible for citizens and to make sure to im- bricate between different types of health ser- vices. Østergaard Møller nevertheless demon- strates how these health houses and their par- ticular spatial settings have also offered new opportunities for health professionals to rede- fine themselves as “health consultants” rather than, for example, as nurses. As the author ar- gues, spatial surroundings that matter for pro- fessionalisation are often omitted, and as the article shows, spatial surroundings are used by the health consultants to identify and counter- identify with more established professions such as the medical profession. In other words, the health consultants and local health houses in many ways find their professional iden- tity through the interstices of more established modes of professionalism in the public sector. Although health professionals and many of the citizens using the services are positive about the organisational set up of this new profes- sional service, the article demonstrates how the spatial surroundings also create an ambiguous space where there is a lack of clarity about ex- pectations and the role of the health profession- als. This interstitial position creates a new de- mand for health consultants to fill in the gaps in their relationships with citizens. Using Ignorance as (Un)Conscious Bureau- cratic Strategy: Street-Level Practices and Structural Influences in the Field of Migra- tion Enforcement In this article, Lisa Marie Borrelli explores the case of street-level bureaucrats working in the field of migration enforcement. She explores the uneasy task of finding ir-regularised mi- grants and processing their cases – often un- til deportation. As the encounters are un- foreseeable and characterised by tension and emotions, bureaucrats develop practices and strategies which help them to manage the of- ten very personal encounters. While research has stressed the importance of ‘coping’ mech- anisms and the problem of many ‘dirty’ hands, the author explores how ignorance is exploited as a tactic in the daily work of bureaucrats. In turn, she looks at how ignorance, including de- liberate not-knowing, as well as non-deliberate partial-knowing or being kept ignorant, is used in public administration, through multi-sited, B. Bjerge, T. Eule, and K. Elmholdt: A Qualitative Gaze on how Mundane Public Administration Works Qualitative Studies 5(2), pp. 49–56 ©2018 53 ethnographic fieldwork in migration offices and the border police/guard offices of three Schen- gen Member States: Sweden, Switzerland and Latvia. Borelli makes the distinction between structural and individual ignorance, which both have the ability to limit a migrant’s agency. By analyzing their intertwined relationship, Bor- relli advances an understanding of how uncer- tainty and a lack of accountability become the results of everyday bureaucratic encounters. Ignorance, she argues, thus obscures state prac- tices, subjecting migrants with precarious legal status to structural violence. In turn, Borelli´s findings underscore how interstices can be fab- ricated or enhanced by bureaucratic (in)-action. Assembling Advice This article by Samuel Kirwan, Morag McDer- mont and John Clarke explores the key role that voluntary sector advice agencies play for many citizens in the UK in accessing and understand- ing public services. These advice agencies may be conceived as fiercely ‘independent’ yet con- flicted at the interstices of the welfare state. Presenting data from participant observation, interviews and focus groups with advisers and managers within the Citizens Advice Service, the paper explores this relationship by focusing on two particular areas of the service; the de- livery of the service by volunteers, and the dif- ferent funding streams that enable the service to function. The paper draws upon assemblage theory, focusing upon elements of an organi- sation in their ongoing practices and relation- ships; a processual approach that allows them to reflect upon the broader implications of their ethnographic data. The study discuss the ‘frag- ile futures’ of advice in the context of aggressive budget cuts and the welfare reform agenda, and shows how funding also becomes ‘a component of the advice assemblage with distinct effects upon the ongoing practice of advice´. The au- thors show how the local act of giving advice is a composition or assemblage of various com- ponents that encapsulates various sites, pasts and futures: the article demonstrates how the volontary advice organisations in this specific context seem necessary to help citizens navi- gate the welfare service. In underlining that, the article also points to the fragile future of these organisations, which thus potentially in- creases people’s danger of falling through the interstices of the welfare services. By focusing on advice assemblages, the article also notes the difficulty of navigating imbricated practices of funding. Treatment of Dual Diagnosis in Denmark — Models for Cooperation and Positions of Power Katrine Schepelern Johansen takes her point of departure in her long-term experience of work- ing as an anthropologist in the psychiatric sys- tem, focusing on patients who suffer from both a mental disorder and a substance use disor- der – called dual diagnosis. These diagnoses are treated in two different organisational units or systems, a medically based psychiatric treat- ment system and a socially-oriented substance use treatment system. Despite the fact that a large proportion of the people in drug treat- ment, and of mental health patients, have these dual diagnoses, there is a remarkable lack of co- ordination and collaboration between the two organisational units. Applying David Brown´s (1983) classic concept of “organisational inter- faces”, Johansen analyses the historical, politi- cal, organisational, professional and technical factors influencing the field of dual diagnosis treatment, and tests how far the concept of or- ganisational interfaces can take us in under- standing the challenges in the field. Not far enough, she concludes. A host of initiatives have been set up to enhance collaboration be- tween the two systems. Some initiatives seem to have been able to generate equal collabora- tion between the two types of systems, how- ever, in practice many initiatives can be char- acterised by a skewed balance between the two systems - predominantly with psychiatry be- ing the most powerful and least interested in collaborating. The two systems and their em- ployees do not enter into cooperation on equal terms and do not seem to agree on its necessity, as Brown´s model would have it. This means that treatment for dual diagnosis in the Danish welfare state is not at all coherent despite the fact that research repeatedly suggests it to be absolutely key for providing the proper help for persons with dual diagnosis. Johansen argues that these difficulties partially depend on un- equal power relations at the organisational in- 54 B. Bjerge, T. Eule, and K. Elmholdt: A Qualitative Gaze on how Mundane Public Administration Works Qualitative Studies 5(2), pp. 49–56 ©2018 terfaces between psychiatric and substance use treatment. Cross-Pollinating Discussions and Contributions of the Special Issue Reading across the articles, it becomes evident that frictions in macro structures and policies are translated into challenges for organisations. We can thus trace the impact of gaps or in- terstices, and overlaps or imbrications, and a piecemeal welfare state by paying close atten- tion to practices at the micro level. This in- cludes negotiations within and between ser- vices, but also interactions with service users and their support networks. There is thus a value in ‘studying up’ on how welfare systems are not quite working smoothly (Nader, 1972). At the same time, the articles show that small- scale case studies need to be acutely aware of the external context of specific welfare provi- sion, such as national policies, economic re- sources and professional traditions. To put it bluntly, no welfare supplier is or can be an island, and the connections and interrelations (or lack of) between agencies define their suc- cess and failure in terms of creating coherence for citizens in need of more than one type of services. As such, the activities performed by the welfare suppliers are inherently imbricated, and yet gaps or interstitial spaces are discern- able. This stance encourages us to find ways of exploring the imbrications of these larger social phenomena, and not least to explore the large in the small (see also Latour, 2005). As case stud- ies, the articles collected in this Special Issue of- fer both methodological and theoretical contri- butions to render the imbrications or interstices of public sector organisation visible. Methodologically, the articles collected in this issue move beyond individual case stud- ies without negating the analytical depth nec- essary for meaningful qualitative research. Nygaard-Christensen, Bjerge and Oute show how a single person’s case can become a useful lens to show the conflicting interpretations and practical toolsets necessary to overcome organ- isational divides. Using a vignette method as a probing device, Østergaard Møller’s article highlights the spatial aspects of professionalism within the health sector, and provides a model to link the imbrication of places, discourses and labels. Borrelli’s work suggests that in trac- ing flows of (mis)information through organi- sational networks, we can improve our under- standing of intentional and unintentional mis- applications of policies. Kirwan, McDermont and Clarke compare different types of relation- ships between voluntary organisations and the British welfare state, and are thus able to high- light the uneasy relationship between funding struggles and voluntary work. Finally, Sche- pelern Johansen uses a kind of ‘meta auto- ethnography’ to highlight the continuity of or- ganisational frictions across individual projects and sites, and offers new pathways of meaning- ful comparison between small-scale case stud- ies. The articles draw on a wide range of sources and concepts for their theory – from technol- ogy studies (Nygaard-Christensen, Bjerge and Oute) to assemblage theory (Kirwan, McDer- mont and Clarke), or critically update classic public administration studies (Borrelli, Schep- elern Johansen, Østergaard Møller). In this, they all provide interesting concepts to develop further. The article by Nygaard-Christensen, Bjerge and Oute shows how local case work also connects to configurations or categories made in practices elsewhere, and how these ‘narrow boxes’ or categories sometimes needs to be suspended or worked around – ‘tinkered with’ – in order to make things work. Organ- ising case work involves navigating both over- lapping or imbricated practices, but also inter- stitial spaces where the discretion of the profes- sional is challenged in other ways. Østergaard Møller introduces a critical geography to the sociology of health care professions, and Sche- pelern Johansen shows the consistency of pro- fessional capital across different contexts and projects. Borrelli unpacks several forms of ig- norance, both at a structural and an individual level. Her work, as well as that of Kirwan, Mc- Dermont and Clarke, discusses the ‘fragile fu- tures’ of organisations and the impact of con- stant uncertainty and ambiguity. While they should not be seen to form a coherent theoreti- cal approach, these themes – managing uncer- tainty, tinkering with cases and maintaining or overcoming professional divisions – are key is- sues that need to be explored in the context of B. Bjerge, T. Eule, and K. Elmholdt: A Qualitative Gaze on how Mundane Public Administration Works Qualitative Studies 5(2), pp. 49–56 ©2018 55 complex welfare systems riddled with imbrica- tions and interstices. In conclusion, we may say that problems at the interface of different kinds of work or services are not new problems. The prob- lems could also be related to old discussions of the consequences of the division of labour and increased functional differentiation, which has been part and parcel of sociological theory since Durkheim (1933) and Luhmann (1997). Similarly, the problem of welfare ‘gaps’ has been addressed in much of the public admin- istration literature (Hupe and Buffat, 2014). As the articles collected in this issue show, how- ever, these issues persist and do not seem to go away, even if particular efforts are made to ‘streamline’ and ‘integrate’ different service provisions. We believe that a practice-based and qualitative approach, as well as the con- cepts of imbrication and interstices, provide helpful devices for opening up work, problems and solutions at the interface of public sector organising. Interstitial spaces are always to some extent discernable; they emerge from ar- chitectural boundaries, professional differences and an overflow of formal organisation and so on. In one way these spaces have their advan- tages, for example in terms of ensuring citizens´ rights or clear cut boundaries in relation to who does what, yet, in another way, the interstitial spaces that we indicate are indeed also caus- ing many problems, and require extremely hard work to stabilise. Similarly, imbrications are also always at stake, practices overlap, cultural norms fold into architecture, and may both en- able each other but also at times constrain each other: figuratively speaking, the tiles may over- lap more than needed. Academics thus need to keep studying these issues, and reminding policy makers that they persist. These ways of exploring the organisation of welfare ser- vices also have practical implications, since no service provider can be seen as successful if it fulfills its own goals, but in doing so collides with or hinders the broader goals of welfare provision and social equity. Similarly, provid- ing a service but not reaching key populations cannot be successful welfare delivery. Scholars thus need to be careful not to have a blinkered view in terms of the complexity of a given wel- fare system. Acknowledgements The idea to the theme of the collected papers of this special issue is the result of research presentations and discussions at the workshop »Change and continuities at the intersections of welfare domains: Ethnographic in- sights into the wider impact of public sector reforms?«. This workshop was held in November 2017 and hosted by the Ethnographic Research into Public Sector Reform Network. The network was funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark. Endnotes 1. 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Journal of Management Studies, 48(1), 202-217. • About the Authors Bagga Bjerge, PhD, is Associate Professor at Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Aarhus University. She is trained within anthropology and sociology. Her re- search activities are mainly based on qualitative meth- ods focusing on policies and policy implementation, bu- reaucracy, social work as well as social marginaliza- tion. Currently, her research projects focus on poverty, drug scenes in Copenhagen, marginalized Greenlanders in Denmark and the management of citizens with com- plex cases. Tobias Georg Eule, PhD, is Professor of Sociology of Law in the »Department of Law«, University of Bern. His research interests include policy implementation, migra- tion control, decision-making as well as anthropological and sociological theories of the state. Kasper Trolle Elmholdt, PhD, is an Assistant Profes- sor of Organisation and Public Management in the De- partment of Political Science, Centre for Management, Or- ganisation and Administration (COMA), at Aalborg Uni- versity, Denmark. His research interests include man- agement consulting, the performativity of management theories and practice-based studies, which he typically explore through an ethnographic stance. https://doi.org/10.1177/009145090503200306 https://doi.org/10.1177/009145090503200306 https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2014.580306 https://doi.org/10.3167/sa.2014.580306 https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2013.854401 https://doi.org/10.1080/14719037.2013.854401 Paper 1: A Qualitative Gaze on how Mundane Public Administration Works Introduction Accomplishing Public Sector Service: Theorising Interstices and Imbrications from a Qualitative Stance Contributions in This Special Issue A Case Study of Casework Tinkering Health Care Professionalism Without Doctors: Spatial Surroundings and Counter-Identification in Local Health Houses Using Ignorance as (Un)Conscious Bureaucratic Strategy: Street-Level Practices and Structural Influences in the Field of Migration Enforcement Assembling Advice Treatment of Dual Diagnosis in Denmark — Models for Cooperation and Positions of Power Cross-Pollinating Discussions and Contributions of the Special Issue Acknowledgements About the Authors Paper 3: Spatial Surroundings and Counter-Identification in Local Health Houses Introduction Theoretical Framework: Professionalization in Site-Specific Contexts Identification and Counter-Identification Mixed Methodological Research Design: Case Selection and Vignette Construction Analytical Section: Observations and Interviews in Two Distinct Types of Health Houses The Medical–Clinical Health House: “Press If You Have An Appointment” Health Professionals in a Medical–Clinical Health House: “We Are Health Consultants” Former Cancer Patient, Now in Rehabilitation: “I Meet People Facing the Same Struggles as Myself” The Community–Based Health House: “A Flat Screen Promotes Various Events” Health Professional in a Community-Based Health House: “I Miss My Work When I Am on Vacation” Citizens on the Edge of the City: “It's the Best the Municipality Has Ever Done for Its Citizens” Conclusion: Counter-Identification With Hospitals and Doctors Acknowledgements About the Author Appendices Paper 4: Street-Level Practices and Structural Influences in the Field of Migration Enforcement Introduction Theoretical Framework Defining Structural Violence in Bureaucratic Encounters The Relation Between Indifference and Ignorance Understanding Uncertainty Understanding Ignorance Methodological Framework Ignorance in Street-Level Encounters Migrants' Use of Ignorance Ignorance as Inherit Feature of the State Conclusion — What Is The Cost of Ignorance? Acknowledgements About the Author Paper 5: Ethnographic Explorations of the Changing Relationship Between Voluntary Advi… Introduction Research Methods Citizens Advice: Some Background Theoretical Tools: On Assemblage Thinking An Advice Service as an Assemblage: The Data The Use of Volunteers On Funding, Funders and Regulatory Effects Legal Aid Funding The Funding Mosaic: Entrepreneurialism and Independence Fragile Futures Acknowledgements About the Authors Paper 6: Models for Cooperation and Positions of Power Introduction The Problems of Dual Diagnosis The Dual Diagnosis Field in Denmark Empirical Material Cooperation Between Psychiatry and Substance Use Treatment — Organizational Interfaces An Under-Organized Interface Learning Points Concluding Remarks Acknowledgements About the Author